Verbal War Over War On Drugs - Vermont

MONTPELIER — If you ask Windsor County State's Attorney Robert Sand, the war on drugs is a bit like the war in Iraq.

Both are wars based on misinformation that have led to extreme human suffering, Sand said during a forum in Montpelier Thursday on drug policies. And both wars have no end in sight and are escalated by unsustainable surges, he said.

"It is time for peace talks in the war on drugs," said Sand, who supports decriminalizing marijuana and using a public health approach to rehabilitate addicts of harder illegal substances.

The law enforcement approach to drugs such as marijuana cause more harm than the use of the drug itself, Sand said. It's also expensive, he said, pointing out that a traffic stop for speeding may take 30 minutes while a stop that involves "a small amount of dried plant material" jumps to three hours.

"If the harm of our response outweighs the harm of the use of the drug itself, then we need to change our response," said Sand, who added that violence is only associated with marijuana when "transactions go awry."

Several of the panelists in the morning could not disagree with Sand more.

Assistant U.S. Attorney William Darrow compared the war on drugs to efforts to stop domestic violence or fraud. Those two societal problems also continue to exist, but it doesn't mean that law enforcement should stop its "ongoing response," he explained.

Darrow also told of a South Hero couple whose recent experimentation with OxyContin has resulted in severe addiction, prison, several trips to rehab and the state taking away their child. He said that is the reality of addiction of Vermont."If that sounds like 'Reefer Madness' to say drugs are poisonous and toxic — but they are," he added, referring to the 1936 propaganda film that depicts casual marijuana use as leading to insanity, violence and death.
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